By Lynette Wilson, September 16, 2011

[Episcopal News Service] Guarani Chief Pedro Alves lives with his people in Tekoa Vy’a Renda Poty, a tiny village owned by the city of Santa Helena in the southern Brazil state of Paraná, where the city provides for their basic needs.

During the last 35 years or so, the Guarani, once a self-sustaining nomadic people in what was then their sub-tropical, deeply forested, biodiverse aboriginal lands, have been driven into dependency with the rise of industrial agriculture in Brazil and the accompanying construction of Itaipu, the world’s largest hydroelectric dam.

“At the time when the dam was built, our forests, our natural land, everything was destroyed, so we had nothing at all,” said Alves, in Portuguese, through an interpreter.

Before construction of the dam, the Guarani lived in an area of protection near what is now the lake, or reservoir.

“Itaipu took us away from there and gave us an area of 231 hectare [570 acres], and at that time there were only 19 families. And then more families joined, and there wasn’t enough room to grow crops.”

From occupying more than 500 acres, the tribe today – 25 families numbering 85 people – lives on less than 10 acres in the village, 75 miles from Itaipu. They live in houses made of large sticks, the roofs reinforced with discarded plastic materials. Water drips from a communal spout.

Beginning in the 1970s, the Guarani living near the planned hydroelectric plant were forced to relocate to reservations, sparking problems since studied and documented by academics: a rise in population, conflict over the reservation boundaries, religious conflicts and rejection by other indigenous people who in prior years had settled on reservations.

The Rev. Luiz Carlos Gabas, an Anglican priest in the Diocese of Curitiba, visited Alves’ village three years ago. After that, with the assistance of diocesan Bishop Naudal Gomes, Pastoral Anglicana da Terra, or Earthly Anglican Care, emerged as a way for individuals, parishes and the diocese to work on issues of climate justice and the rights of indigenous people, peasants and the landless.

Earthly Anglican Care also is supported by a companion relationship between the Diocese of Curitiba and theEpiscopal Diocese of California and facilitated by Michael Tedrick, an Episcopal Church-appointed missionary from the California diocese.

“We see the relationship between their struggle and the struggle of the indigenous in North America, the struggle of the small farmers and their families and that of documented and undocumented immigrants in the United States,” Tedrick said. “It is in our struggles that we gain a deeper understanding of our likeness.”

Earthly Anglican Care’s purpose is not to evangelize, said Gabas in Portuguese through an interpreter, but to understand indigenous peoples’ problems and advocate for their rights. Indigenous peoples, specifically the Guarani, have rich spiritual lives and beliefs that have inspired others, including leaders in the liberation theology movement.

“The Guarani people have a utopian dream, and that is to walk eastward in search of the ‘promised land,’” said Gomes. “The Indians themselves call it the ‘harmless land.’”

Gabas explained further: “When the Portuguese and Spanish arrived, the Indians started to lose their territories. Before the foreign occupation and the violence, they visualized a harmless land where no harm could exist.”

In fact, this vision of a utopian “promised land” inspired liberation theology, and liberation theologian Pedro Casaldaliga, who worked with indigenous people, created the Missa da Terra sem Males, or Mass of the Land Without Evil, based on this dream, Gabas added.

Largely seen as a construct of the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America, liberation theology has been used widely as a foundation for social change by religious groups worldwide. With the rise of conservative leadership in the Roman Catholic Church, the church has moved away from liberation theology.

“What I have learned from secular people working with both the landless and the Guarani is that while there is great gratitude for the solidarity the [Roman] Catholic Church has shown to both those groups and the poor in the past, the new advocates standing courageously with the landless and the Guarani are the Episcopal Church and other partners,” said Diocese of California Bishop Marc Andrus, who visited the Guarani in April 2011.

“I saw it very, very concretely in Cascavel, where the local parish led by Gabas is working in a parallel way with both groups and very powerfully bringing the two disempowered groups together, the Guarani and the landless, to begin to make common cause together … That is a new thing that really is being mediated by the local parish in Cascavel so that’s fantastic.”

Spiritual life

In Alves’ village, as in most Guarani villages, the prayer house is at the center of life.

“They are a very spiritual people,” said Paulo Humberto Porto Borges, a professor at the Universidade Estadual do Oeste do Paraná, speaking in Portuguese through a translator. “They are understood as some of the most spiritual people of the Americas. And the Guarani’s cultural resistance is also due to their spirituality.”

Porto Borges, who introduced Gabas to the Guarani, began working with indigenous people in 1990 alongside Jesuit missionaries. For many years, he worked on land-division issues with Indians in the Amazon, and for the last 11 he has worked with the Guarani.

With a population of more than 200 million people, Brazil is the 10th largest economy in the world, yet more than 26 percent of the population lives in poverty – many in extreme poverty. A wealthy few and multinational corporations own most of the land, which has led to ownership conflicts, violence and death.

Both Brazil’s landless and indigenous people fight for territory and are concerned with the country’s industrial agriculture practices, with the landless training leaders for political life. Gabas also works with the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, the Landless Workers Movement, a large social movement organized by rural workers that fights for land and agrarian reform in Brazil.

“The Guarani want to recover the traditional territories of their ancestors, and their main focus is to keep their culture, their language, their religion,” said Gabas. “They are also worried about agricultural chemicals and pesticides. And they want to be able to provide enough food for their people without any help from the government. The landless, on the other hand, get involved in politics and government.

“Indigenous people never had title to the land because they were indigenous.”

The land where Tekoa Vy’a Renda Poty sits today once belonged to his ancestors, the chief, Alves, said.

The dam

When Itaipu was built, it flooded 800,000 hectares of indigenous land, and Itaipu only compensated them for that loss after lots of pressure. Ultimately, they were given 6,000 hectares spread over three areas, for what they had lost, said Porto Borges.

“Itaipu could only be built during a dictatorship,” he said.

Driven mostly by high demand for electricity in Brazil, the governments of Brazil and neighboring Paraguay began negotiating the hydroelectric dam’s construction in the 1960s, signing the Itaipu Treaty, an agreement necessary to harness the Parana River’s power, in April 1973. In May 1974, Itaipu Binacional was created to build and later manage the power plant, the world’s largest hydroelectric dam in terms of power generation, supplying 20 percent of Brazil’s and 90 percent of Paraguay’s electrical demand.

Phase 1 of the dam’s construction began in 1975 with the Paraná River channel excavation, eventually diverting the river from its natural bed, under the government of Ernesto Beckmann Geisel, a military-elected president.

The hydroelectric dam at Itaipu, with a height of 196 meters, was modeled after the 80-meter-high Iguaçu Falls, a world heritage site; one a natural wonder, the other an engineering marvel.

In 2003, Itaipu Binacional changed its institutional mission to incorporate environmental responsibility and sustainable development into its strategic corporate goals, as noted in its booklet “Cultivating Good Water.” The change has required Itaipu Binacional to open a dialogue and form partnerships with the “numerous players,” including the Guarani, in the 29 cities included in the Parana basin, or set of waterways connected to the dam’s 109-mile watershed.

“The Triple Frontier, the location of the Itaipu Dam, has a history that is inseparable from the indigenous presence, especially the Guarani people, which exerted great cultural influence in the region,” the booklet says. “Today, these communities are populations at social risks, and therefore Itaipu [Binacional] is trying to develop actions that will enable them to have better living conditions, with new opportunities for income generation, technical assistance and food production for their own consumption, rescuing their culture and self-esteem, and the encouragement of crafts, among others.”

Itaipu Binacional acknowledges that historically unequal relationships subordinated the Indians to the whites, a relationship driven by barter for small requests in the short-term. A new approach requires “establishing a decision-making process with the participation of indigenous people, where they are, in practice the main players,” which will require patience, the booklet says.

Indigenous people

Brazil’s indigenous population numbers half a million people, divided into 400 tribes, speaking 170 different languages, said Porto Borges.

“They are all very distinct,” he said, adding that three individual tribes live in Paraná.

The Guarani were hunters and farmers, but very little land remains for them in Paraná after the building of the dam and the rise of agribusiness, which has increased the demand and competition for land.

“In old times, they used to have wide, wide extensions of land, and now they are supposed to adapt to small land,” Porto Borges said. “Their holy men say the world is out of balance and that the white man commits a huge sin when the white man states that the lands have an owner. Because the only owner of the lands is God; God is called ‘nhanderu,’ ‘father of all.’  And Jesus Christ ‘nandejara,’ that means ‘our owner.’ There is a big difference between God and Jesus Christ.”

One of the great challenges for the indigenous people is self-sustainability; they are aware that their dependency on government to supply their basic needs harms their political struggle.

“There are some indigenous communities – like in Amazon – where you can find reserved areas that are very extensive, large tracts of land where they can still be autonomous,” Porto Borges said. “But for the rest of Brazil, south and southwest, and northeast, these areas are too small for the needs of the Guarani or other indigenous [people]. Only in the Amazon do some of them have enough land to exist.”

“In our region, for example, the indigenous people are supposed to adapt themselves to another logic of living [involving economics and different ways of organizing], and that is their great challenge,” Porto Borges said.

Without sufficient land, indigenous people become dependent on help from others. Moreover, the indigenous leadership is beginning to understand their continued native existence depends on the political projects of the state.

“A Brazilian project that praises and gives advantages to agribusiness will always be harmful to native people,” Porto Borges said. “A Brazilian project that gives advantage to Brazilian families and small farmers is likely to be more favorable to indigenous people, and that is why nowadays the indigenous people in Paraná are now joining the landless movement and La Via Campesina.”

Still, he said, cooperative indigenous involvement in national politics is greater in other South American countries, such as Peru and in Bolivia, where people elected an indigenous president, Evo Morales.

“In Brazil, there are conflicts among the Indians: Some are for joining the movement, and some are not,” Porto Borges said.

“There are some Indians in Brazil who have no contact with civilization as we know it, and there are others who are in full contact with civilization. Some of them have lots of land, some have no land at all, or a small or little bit of land. Because of this, conflicts of interest have arisen.”

The government doesn’t have written policies favoring one tribe over another, but there are cases in which it has gone further to address the needs of some over others. In Paraná, for instance, the Kaingang have received the most attention, Porto Borges explained.

“There are fewer policies for the Guaraní, and the Kaingang people are strung together with FUNAI, but the Guaraní are not and have less strength,” he said. “So, depending on the fight strategy, the results are different.”

The National Indian Foundation, FUNAI, is the government agency that establishes and carries out policies related to indigenous peoples.

A great national debate exists concerning indigenous matters, and Brazil’s modern-day progressive constitution defends the rights of indigenous people, Porto Borges said. For instance, mining is prohibited on land belonging to indigenous people, he said, adding that business interests also exert great pressure to modify the laws.

“Eleven percent of the national territory belongs to the indigenous [tribes], but in the constitution the ‘union’ can only explore them if the Indians permit it,” he said. “In government, laws are now being made so that the indigenous, mining and farming monoculture interests can all exist, with the Indians favored.”

In early September, the Guarani Indians demanded that Shell, a global oil company, stop using their ancestral lands for ethanol production.

Indians’ understanding that they have interests in common and their increased connectedness through knowing each other’s demands are recent phenomena, he noted.

Throughout history and up to 100 years ago, Porto Borges said, some or all of the indigenous people were enemies. The Kaingang came into contact with modern people in the 1930s, but the Guarani have been in contact with modern people for 500 years. (According to FUNAI, some 67 tribes in Brazil don’t have sustained contact with people outside their tribes. In January 2011, FUNAI released photos of an “un-contacted” tribe along the border with Peru.)

Despite language, cultural and religious differences, Porto Borges said, most indigenous tribes share or have lived a form of “primitive communism,” sharing housing, food and work.

“For example, the Guarani have a word to describe their economy: ‘Jopoi.’ It means ‘open hand,’” Porto Borges said. “That describes their economy. They are generous … Because they are not people who accumulate, they don’t close their hands.”

The Guarani people see the people of European descent, in both North and South America, as closed handed, said Andrus, explaining his encounter with the Guarani’s “open hand,” society.

“When they receive something they are already asking themselves how do I pass it on, so not to necessarily pass it on unchanged, but how can the pass it on enhanced to the right person who is right to receive it,” he said. “It’s a dynamic that is open so that if they receive money, or wisdom, or emotional understanding, or possessions of any kind, they are asking themselves how can that pass from the one hand that receives it and the other that gives it away.”

Applying an “open hand” to an economy – looking at how to enhance and pass on what is received – could be transformative in an economy, he added.

“For me there are other ways of life and organization than capitalism,” said Porto Borges. “There are other ways of culture than the white, Western Christian culture. And there are cultures that have rich responses to reality… and these cultures compound humanity … they are part of it.”

In September 2007, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, which contains 46 Articles aimed at protecting their rights, and thereby their existence.

“When any given human culture disappears, humanity becomes more fragile and poorer,” Porto Borges said. “They teach us that it is possible to resist and to maintain their integrity and culture even though they are fighting a globalized culture like ours.

“And besides all that, we owe a historical debt to these people. What we call the discovery of America was actually a true holocaust for these people.”

For more information on Pastoral Anglicana da Terra, or Earthly Anglican Care, contact Diocese of California missionary Michael Tedrick at michaelt@diocal.org.

The Episcopal Church observes Lent in solidarity with Christians throughout the ages. Lent has anciently been understood as a time of solidarity with those who are to be baptized at the Easter Vigil. It’s a time to focus on prayer and study and fasting, and in some traditions, almsgiving. Each of those, when done in solidarity with those preparing to be baptized, isan invitation for us to deepen our own Christian spiritual practice.

I would encourage you this year to expand the realm of that practice; to think about your solidarity with those who walk the way of Christ, with those who walk the way of Jesus, in particular concern for those beyond your local community.

We have a remarkable calling in this era to think about our relationships not only with other Christians, but with other human beings across this planet, and indeed with the rest of creation. Perhaps you might focus your Lenten discipline this year in attention to how you live on this earth.

Do you live like the Son of Man, who travels continuously with never a place to lay his head? Who doesn’t carry two bags or an extra lunch or an extra pair of sandals? That is what he encouraged his disciples to do, to travel light.

Are you traveling light on this earth?

Consider as you live through each day, how you use water, how you use fuel, how you use electricity, and how you use the food that is a gift.

If each of us is able to thoughtfully enter into a more compassionate concern for the blessings of creation, it will change the way in which human beings as a species impact this earth.

I heard at the Primates Meeting recently, from the Primate of Polynesia, a very agonized conversation about the plight of his people on low-lying islands in the South Pacific, which are rapidly disappearing beneath the rising sea level. That rising sea level is the result of the way in which wealthier parts of this human population use energy.

We hear about the concerns of people in Africa who find corn too expensive to buy for food because we are using it here to produce ethanol so we can drive our cars.

The way in which we use our resources is a spiritual matter. The way in which we live on this earth is a matter of faithfulness. Can we act in solidarity with those who are preparing to enter this community and do so more thoughtfully and in a more compassionate way that considers all of God’s creation?

I invite you to a blessed and holy Lent, to a Lent of prayer and study and compassion through almsgiving and fasting.

– The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori is presiding bishop and primate of the Episcopal Church.

*** STATEMENT AND COMMITMENTS***
We are a group of Anglican Episcopals from Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States who feel the urgency of addressing climate justice at this time in the world we serve. Participants are from the Episcopal/Anglican Dioceses of California, Central Ecuador, Colombia, Connecticut, Cuba, Cuernavaca, Curitiba, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Haiti, New Hampshire, New York, Olympia, and Panama; the Anglican Province of Brazil; the Anglican Province of Central America; The Episcopal Church (TEC); the Berkeley Divinity School; the Yale Divinity School (YDS); the Theological Center of the Dominican Republic (CET); the Commission for Theological Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (CETALC); the International Center for Anglican Theological Studies (CIAET); and the Latin American Council of Churches (CLAI).

We met in the Dominican Republic at the Bishop Kellogg Retreat Center in San Pedro de Macorís from December 7 – 10, 2010, in parallel with the UN Framework Convention Climate Change COP 16 in Cancun.

In the context of companionship, with worship, prayer and Bible reflection the issues related to climate change were addressed from our varied contexts. We heard powerful witnesses to climate injustice and creative responses by dioceses, communities, and individuals. Within our group we had people who have been advocates for climate justice for many decades, academics who have devoted years of study and effort to the issues, Church leaders, bishops, priests, and lay, who see the destruction visited on their communities, and young people, some who are seminarians who seek to pattern their lives in ways that reflect climate justice as a core value.

Climate change affects the whole planet. Every system of human culture: economics, politics, education – all are inextricably related to climate change. Representatives of our various dioceses described rising water levels displacing entire island populations, deforestation on a vast scale, the decimation of indigenous peoples, and degradation of rivers through toxic pesticide runoff and human waste. We named the truths about the causes of these devastations: we have lost a sense of connection with the world, and have become dominators rather than “good gardeners;” over-developed countries have given themselves over to the sin of consumerism. This sin, as sin always does, has clouded and distorted all our relationships: between people, with the Earth, and with our creator God.

In some places we recognize that the scale and depth of destruction can no longer be reversed. Such irreversibility awaits the whole planet, in a timeframe much shorter than we imagined even a few years ago. We are consuming at such a frantic rate that we are stealing from the future generations of the Earth. It is essential, urgent that we act now.

Among us are representatives of the Diocese of Haiti. They raised their voices in dramatic witness to the most acute abuses of Earth and human dignity. Our Haitian brothers spoke with a prophetic voice, denouncing a history and a present at variance with the teaching of God. Haitians, deeply vulnerable already because of long-standing abuses of the Earth and human dignity, now also live the results of chaotic climate change.

Although each instance of climate injustice we heard of during our meeting is terrible in itself, and together they present a nearly overwhelming reality, we as Christians are people of hope. Our hope is in God, “whose memory is eternal,” who does not forget the covenants made with the Earth, and our hope is in our capacity to love, planted in our very being, the Image of God among us. Further, we have hope in a God who not only goes beyond the Earth, even the universe, but is also intimately with us and all the creation. As a result, we are deeply interconnected. This hope, we recognize, places a great responsibility on us.

As Anglican Episcopals we have received the hope that springs from the love of God through the Baptismal Covenant. This Covenant has shaped our lives to recognize Christ in every person, and to work untiringly for justice and peace in creation. We are strengthened by our life in the Church to take risks in the world in the cause of justice. Just as we act as prophets to denounce injustice, we act as reconcilers and announce the possibility of hope and love. “So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:20).

We met in the season of Advent, when we watch for the coming of Christ. We feel the tension of the nearness of God, and the not-yet nature of a broken world. We trust that by the grace of God and our efforts inspired by the Sprit of God, the following prophecy will come true: “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Nothing accursed will be found there any more… The one who testifies to these things says, ‘Surely I am coming soon.’ Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev. 22:1-3a, 20)

In this gathering we have expressed our Advent hope through five concrete commitments to each other, to the Church, to the Earth and its peoples, and to God:

• to develop a mechanism (ie. a carbon tithe or energy fund) to promote actual reductions of carbon emissions by affluent populations and to offer assistance in ways identified by vulnerable communities
• to incorporate the issue of climate justice, and related themes, in educational programs, at all age levels and venues, within and outside the Church
• to support ongoing global initiatives and campaigns aimed at:  the actual reduction of climate emissions by overdeveloped nations, advocacy and support for forest-dwelling and indigenous peoples, and food sovereignty
• to recruit and empower a core of missionaries from the global south to come to the United States, in a ministry of accompaniment and consciousness-raising about the effects of climate change
• to maintain our relationships with one another through an active network for climate justice in the Anglican Communion and the Episcopal Church

These commitments are both in process and part of the process, and we realize that they will only reach their full expression as our group, and others who join us, work and walk together. We leave with a deep sense of gratitude for this time together and with the fervent desire and dedication to follow this path which God is making before us.

Signed,

the Rt. Rev. Marc Handley Andrus, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of California, USA;

the Rt. Rev. Grisleda Delgado Del Carpio, Bishop of the Episcopal Church of Cuba;

the Rt. Rev. Naudal Gomes, Bishop of the Anglican-Episcopal Diocese of Curitiba, Brazil;

the Rt. Rev. Armando Guerra, Bishop of the Episcopal Churh of Guatemala, Presiding Bishop of the Anglican Church of the Region of Central America, President of CETALC;

the Rt. Rev. Julio C. Holguin, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of the Dominican Republic;

the Rt. Rev. Julio Murray, Bishop of the Episcopal Church of Panama, President of CLAI;

the Rt. Rev. Luis Fernando Ruiz, Bishop of Episcopal Diocese of Central Ecuador;

Mr. José Abreu, Theological Center of the Dominican Republic;

the Rev. Soner Alexandre, Episcopal Diocese of Haiti;

Dr. Sheila Andrus, Episcopal Diocese of California;

Mr. David Barr, the Yale Divinity School;

Mr. Pedro Ivo Batista, Anglican Episcopal Church of Brazil;

Mr. Steve Blackmer, Diocese of New Hampshire, Yale Divinity School;

the Very Rev. Canon Ashton Brooks, Dean of the Cathedral Church of the Epiphany, Santo Domingo;

Mr. Scott Claassen, Yale Divinity School;

Mr. Leonel Polanco de la Cruz, Theological Center of the Dominican Republic;

the Rev. Luiz Carlos Gabas, Anglican-Episcopal Diocese of Curitiba;

Mr. Luis García, Theological Center of the Dominican Republic;

Mrs. Barbara Gomez, Episcopal Diocese of the Dominican Republic;

Mr. Lorenzo Gómez, Theological Center of the Dominican Republic;

the Rev. P. Joshua “Griff” Griffin, Environmental Justice Missioner for the Episcopal Diocese of California;

Ms. Freddie Helmiere, Seattle, Washington;

Dr. Willis Jenkins, Margaret A. Farley Assistant Professor of Social Ethics at Yale Divinity School, Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut;

the Rev. Stephanie Johnson, Episcopal Diocese of New York, Yale Divinity School;

Ms. Pauline Kulstad, Episcopal Diocese of the Dominican Republic;

Mr. Ken Lathrop, Diocese of Cuernavaca, Anglican Church of Mexico;

the Rev. Alvaro Yepes López, Bishop Kellogg Conference Center, San Pedro de Macorís;

the Rev. Glenda McQueen, The Episcopal Church Global Partnership Officer for Latin America and the Caribbean;

the Rev. Chris Morck, Episcopal Diocese of Central Ecuador, CLAI Environmental Program Coordinator;

the Rev. Canon Ricardo Potter, Episcopal Diocese of the Dominican Republic;

Ms. Angela Maria Pulido, Bishop Kellogg Conference Center, San Pedro de Macorís;

Mrs. Carmen Regina Duarte Gomes, Episcopal-Anglican Diocese of Curitiba;

Mrs. Melissa Ridlon, Episcopal Diocese of California;

The Rev. Diego Fernando Sabogal, Episcopal Diocese of Columbia;

Mr. Vanel Saint Juste, Theological Center of the Dominican Republic;

Ms. Katie Salisbury, Yale Divinity School;

Mr. Mike Schut, The Episcopal Church Officer for Environmental/Economic Affairs, Episcopal Diocese of Olympia;

Mr. Michael Tedrick, Episcopal Diocese of California Missioner serving in the Episcopal-Anglican Diocese of Curitiba;

the Rev. P. Angel R. Vallenilla, Episcopal Diocese of the Dominican Republic;

Mr. Wagner Vergara, Episcopal-Anglican Diocese of Curitiba;

Dec 27, 2010 by Bill McKibben

By Stephen Blackmer, December 14, 2010

[Episcopal News Service] Last week’s gathering in the Dominican Republic of Episcopalians and Anglicans from Latin American, the Caribbean and the United States — bishops, clergy, staff, seminarians and lay leaders — was a tangible sign that a new world is waiting to be born — and that we are called in Christ to serve as midwives of new life.

As participants from Panama, Brazil, Haiti, Guatemala, Ecuador, and the Dominican Republic told us, the effects of climate change are being felt right now. People are being hurt and killed. Other forms of life are being extinguished. The planet we will pass on to our children tomorrow is being impoverished today. Whether we are ready or not, whether we want to believe it or not, a changing climate is bringing social and ecological challenges to every person on this earth.

While we were gathered, Bishop Julio Murray of Panama gave us breaking news of devastating rainfall in Panama. Ten people, at least, died. So much water fell from the sky that the Panama Canal — that great manmade river linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans — had to be closed.

Such violent storms are becoming increasingly common all around the world, signs that a previously stable global climate is becoming volatile and increasingly dangerous. Even the wealthy of the world, including many of us who use money, education, and privilege to keep hardship at bay, will feel the effects. Others with less security will seek escape through migration. Too many will turn to drugs, alcohol and violence. Many will suffer. For this, those of us who consume the vast amounts of oil, coal, and gas that are the primary cause of a changing climate bear responsibility.

Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you…

Through our consumption and destruction of the riches of the world, through accumulating the benefits for ourselves and requiring people in other places and times to bear the costs, through ignorance and closing our eyes to the harm we cause, those of us in the United States and other wealthy countries are bringing great harm upon the world that God created for all life.

And yet, in this very loss, in this very sin, new life and a new way is starting to take form. As with all new life, this one is taking shape in darkness and will be born in pain. We are called not only to witness but also to participate in this pain. These are eternal truths we cannot change. There is no other way.

By virtue of our life in Christ, we know it is only by our passage through the darkness that we may find new life. Bishop Griselda Delgado Del Carpio of Cuba movingly told participants about the renewal of her church through not only restoring a lovely building but establishing gardens of abundance to feed hungry people. The church gathering in the Dominican Republic is itself another sign. It is our task to share all this news — news of death, pain, and darkness as well as news of life, joy and new light. All of us in the church have a choice to help this birth or to hold it back.

Alone, God brought the world into being out of darkness. Since then, it is through human beings that God has brought new light into the world. Through Noah after the flood, through Moses seeking liberation from Egypt’s empire, through Jeremiah and the prophets, through Miriam, Ruth, and Esther, finally through the conceiving of Jesus Christ born in the darkness of the Virgin Mary’s womb. It is in human form and through human action — passing through the darkness of both womb and tomb — that hope in human form comes again.

So it may be once more as, through climate change, we learn anew the lessons of the flood and as we cry to be freed from our self-created slavery of consumption. In days ahead, as we celebrate the great liturgy of new birth, those who gathered in the Dominican Republic bear a message for the church and the world to rejoice that hope awaits in the darkest hour – and that our task is to bring new life into the world.

To follow discussion on next steps from the gathering, click here.

– Stephen Blackmer is a student from the Diocese of New Hampshire at Berkeley Divinity School. Prior to going to seminary, he worked for 30 years in forest conservation and rural community development in northern New England and New York.

With heavy hearts we share news of record rainfall and deadly floods in Panama.  Bishop Julio Murray was present with us in the DR and has asked our prayers and support.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/panama/8190482/Panama-Canal-closed-due-to-deadly-floods.html

By Lynette Wilson, December 09, 2010

[Episcopal News Service – San Pedro, Dominican Republic] It is estimated that by 2050, 80 percent of the rivers in the Dominican Republic will have dried up unless something is done to stop deforestation and develop a strategy to slow climate change, said Silvio Minier of Oxfam.

Minier, a former Jesuit priest who now works in advocacy and programs for Oxfam based in Santo Domingo, addressed the Episcopal Climate Justice Gathering Dec. 8, giving an overview of the local effects of climate change.

More than 30 people — mostly Anglicans and Episcopalians and a few ecumenical seminarians — from Cuba, the United States, Ecuador, Panama, Colombia, Haiti, Mexico, Brazil, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic are meeting Dec. 7-10 at the Bishop Kellogg Center to explore intersection between poverty and climate change, and perhaps frame the conversation in terms of “climate justice.” The meeting is convened by Bishop Marc Andrus of the Episcopal Diocese of California, and Bishop Naudal Gomes, Diocese of Curitiba, Brazil.

The Dominican Republic shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti and is crisscrossed by three mountain ranges. In the 1980s, Dominicans migrated to cities from rural areas; 50 percent of the population now lives in cities and surrounding areas, Minier explained, as translated from Spanish.

Some cause and effect can be quantified, Minier continued.

Forests areas surrounding cities have been clear cut to make way for agriculture. Over the last 10 years both the dry season and the rainy season have lengthened. Desertification and deforestation have increased the danger and severity of floods – rivers crest their banks, destroying crops and livelihoods. Water levels in Lake Enriquillo, the country’s largest, along with Lake Sumatra in Haiti, have risen more in the last five years than in the previous 200. Hurricanes and tropical storms have strengthened and wrought havoc, Minier said.

As an example of flood severity, Minier shared a photo from a storm in 2007 that showed flood waters at roof-top levels; adding that the photo was taken in a flat area and that in mountainous regions, floods are even more severe.

“The Dominican Republic is the eighth country in the world that will be most affected by climate change,” Minier said, adding that governments are not doing anything, and that the local environmental council has studied climate change’s effects on the coast and tourism, but not on poor people and agriculture.

The Episcopal-Anglican gathering coincides with the U.N. Climate Change Conference of world leaders who are nearing the end of a second week of climate talks in Cancún, Mexico, to attempt to hammer out the details of an agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions that would replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

At the 2009 U.N. conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, negotiators failed to reach a binding deal to replace the protocol. Developing nations are pushing for a second phase of the Kyoto agreement, including deeper emissions cuts. Developed countries, including Japan, Russia and Canada, have said they will not accept further cuts.

In Cancún, nations have been unable to agree on key issues, such as reducing emissions and monitoring other nations’ adherence to reducing emissions, and the specifics on a disaster fund for developing countries, could potentially mean another Copenhagen-style failure to come to an accord, according to news reports.

Oxfam works with partners in the Dominican Republic to mitigate the effects of disaster before disaster happens, but so far the government, Minier said, only responds to disaster and has not made progress towards prevention.

When asked what the church can do to help, Minier explained that people need to be made to realize their role in what is happening and that the government, which is doing some things, needs to be pushed to do more.

And he stressed, “You can’t have plans for climate change reduction without including women and food security.”

– Lynette Wilson is an ENS staff writer.

It is impossible to describe the gratitude I feel at this moment.

For the last four days I have experienced a tremendous outpouring of love, community, and solidarity.  God has been made real to me, by sisters and brothers, gathered here from around the Americas.  We are currently reviewing a statement, written by our bishops which reflects the experience and affirmations of this gathering. I am delighted to report that we have also agreed on five concrete commitments which we will make to each other, to the Church, to the world, and to God.

Our time has been so rich and so focused that I have been unable to give steady updates along the way.  We have harddrives full of video and notes, and giant newsprint pages covered in Spanish, English, and a common sweat which unifies us all.

In the weeks and months to come, we will use this site to report as best we can, the beauty that has happened in San Pedro de Macorís.  Our ratified statement and the commitments of our group will follow later today.

En la esperanza de la justicia climática,

Griff

[Episcopal News Service] What started in 2004 as a 2,000-square-foot organic garden behind La Iglesia Santa Maria Virgen in Itabo, Cuba, grew to a community-wide project that empowered people and spread to vacant lots, yards and other dioceses.

“A small group of people, in small places, doing small things, can change the face of the earth,” is a popular saying in Cuba, said Bishop Griselda Delgado Del Carpio of the Episcopal Church of Cuba.

Delgado, formerly the rector of Santa Maria Virgen, shared the story of her parish’s garden during a presentation here Dec. 7, the first day of the inaugural Episcopal Climate Justice Gathering.

More than 30 people — mostly Anglicans and Episcopalians and a few ecumenical seminarians — from Cuba, the United States, Ecuador, Panama, Colombia, Haiti, Mexico, Brazil, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic are meeting Dec. 7-10 at the Bishop Kellogg Center here for the gathering, convened by Bishop Marc Andrus of the Episcopal Diocese of California, and Bishop Naudal Gomes, Diocese of Curitiba, Brazil.

Three important things began to happen as the garden grew, Delgado explained to ENS through a translator following the day’s formal discussion: the people discovered they could make money by cultivating and preserving food; people learned how to work as a team and discovered they had previously undiscovered talents and the potential to create a new life; and, most importantly, the people grew spiritually, found faith and discovered God in life, she said.

Delgado was one of four presenters, including the Rev. Christopher Morck, environmental program officer for the Latin America Council of Churches; the Rev. Pedro Ivo Batista of the Episcopal Anglican Province of Brazil; and the Rev. Diego Fernando Sabogal, of Colombia, who each spoke during the session aimed at framing the gathering’s conversation on climate justice.

The purpose of the meeting is to explore the intersection between poverty and climate change, and perhaps begin to change the conversation in the church from one of “climate change” to “climate justice.”

The gathering convened as world leaders met for a second week of climate talks in Cancún, Mexico, to attempt to hammer out the details of an agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions that would replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

At the 2009 U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, negotiators failed to reach a binding deal to replace the protocol. Developing nations are pushing for a second phase of Kyoto, including deeper emissions cuts.

The Episcopal gathering’s presence “signifies the desire to envision together what justice means in the face of climate-induced suffering and continued environmental destruction,” Morck said during his presentation, which focused on the general themes of the climate justice movement.

Climate justice needs to be considered in context of broader questions, he said, including how people relate to each other and the earth and what Christian witness and practice mean in an “unprecedented crisis caused by specific human groups, ideologies and actions.”

“The intimate connection between wealth and economic growth to poverty and environmental crisis is both our past and our present, and many of the ‘solutions’ to the climate crisis threaten to repeat once more the way the overdeveloped have impoverished others as their enslaved labor pool, their amoral superstore of raw materials, their waste dump, their theater of war,” said Morck.

Early on in the gathering, particular themes began to emerge, including the consensus that now is the time for the church to reclaim and fortify its prophetic voice.

Solidarity is the thing that makes the prophetic voice strong, said Andrus during the discussion.

“In our [church] language, we think of the prophetic voice as one,” he said. “People need to speak in solidarity with one another.”

Andrus used the example of abolishing apartheid in South Africa. It wasn’t until South Africa’s problem became the world’s problem, he said, that the country was able to rid itself of its racial-social ideology of separation.

During his talk about social movements and climate change, Batista, who has for more than 20 years been involved in social justice movements, talked about the threat of disappearance now affecting island nations and other vulnerable populations.

“People who live on the river banks, coasts, mountains are already being affected by climate change and all governments of the world know that this is happening,” said Batista, as translated from Portuguese. “There has never been so much talk about climate change as there has been in the last 20 years … Why are they speaking so much about it and still some haven’t signed on to Kyoto? … Not because of lack of technology or science or spiritual contentions, it’s because of a lack of political will.”

In addition to the church finding its prophetic voice once again, other themes that began to emerge from the gathering included the need to translate theology into action, developing a catechism of redemption based on peoples’ relationship to nature, engaging children and youth and creating community awareness.

In regard to the latter, Delgado said, Santa Maria Virgen’s garden said it all.

“Once they started doing the work, we didn’t have to tell anybody — people caught on to what was happening, the university came, the media came, the minister of agriculture came because it was something that was happening and people could see it,” she said.

– Lynette Wilson is an ENS staff writer.

By Lynette Wilson, December 06, 2010

[Episcopal News Service] Anglican and Episcopal leaders from North, South and Central America and the Caribbean are arriving Dec. 6 in the Dominican Republic for a four-day gathering to explore the intersection between poverty and climate change.

“We’re hoping to change the conversation in the church from one of climate change to climate justice,” said the Rev. P. Joshua “Griff” Griffin, environmental justice missioner in the Diocese of California and one of the conference’s organizers.

Representatives from Cuba, the United States, Ecuador, Panama, Colombia, Haiti, Mexico, Brazil, Guatemala, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic will meet Dec. 7-10 at the Bishop Kellogg Center in San Pedro de Macorís, east of the capital Santo Domingo, for the first Episcopal Climate Justice Gathering, convened by Bishop Marc Andrus of the Episcopal Diocese of California, and Bishop Naudal Gomes, Diocese of Curitiba, Brazil.

Click here for the gathering’s blog.

The gathering in the Dominican Republic will take place as world leaders convene a second week of climate talks in Cancún, Mexico, for the 2010 U.N. Climate Change Conference, which kicked off Nov. 29. The first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, signed and ratified by 191 nations — the United States signed but didn’t ratify it — is set to expire in 2012. The protocol commits 37 industrialized nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent (below 1990 levels) by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050.

At the 2009 U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, negotiators failed to reach a binding deal to cut greenhouse gases when Kyoto expires. Developing nations are pushing for a second phase of the protocol, including deeper emissions cuts of up to 40 percent by 2020.

Anglicans and Episcopalians meeting in the Dominican Republic in parallel with world leaders in Mexico is “symbolic,” said Mike Schut, the Episcopal Church’s economic and environmental affairs officer, in a telephone interview.

“If governments are not going to get it together, it’s time for grassroots awareness building and action,” he said. “This time together in the Dominican Republic could be one significant way to make that happen on an international level.”

The gathering, in fact, is the result of a companion diocese relationship between the Episcopal Diocese of California and the Anglican Diocese of Curitiba, in the Episcopal Anglican Church of Brazil, Griffin said, in a telephone interview.

The gathering’s participants will share information from their own countries; look at climate justice from diverse perspectives; consider the climate change issue in the Dominican Republic; discuss the intersection of Christian theology and climate justice; and explore commitments to work together.

In addition to forming partnerships, the hope, Griffin added, is for the gathering “to build relationships that could be the fabric, the root, of a church- and communion-wide network for climate justice.”

Christians are called to take care of creation, said Gomes, in an e-mail.

The church, Gomes added, must work with the United Nations and civic and other organizations to change habits and use technology to reverse the damage humans have had on the environment.

“The church cannot remain outside this call, and other organizations of society should be positioned to act, so that decisions of our governments, which are political decisions, are actually carried out,” he said.

Shared faith and companion relationships have the potential to effect great change, said Andrus, in a telephone interview.

“[Archbishop of Canterbury] Rowan Williams wrote a number of years ago that it takes a global body to address global challenges,” Andrus said. “The communion — before the tensions that have caught our minds the last few years — was a virtual communion; we didn’t really function together.

“The attention that we’ve placed on the existence of the communion over the last few years gives us the chance to be a functioning body regarding globalized challenges. A great deal can be done and has to be done by individuals and congregations in their local context, but we also have to see how we can coordinate efforts across our shared faith and commitments … This presents a great possibility.”

– Lynette Wilson is an ENS staff writer.